Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing address the press after an announcement that the city of Detroit is pursuing municipal bankruptcy, July 18, 2013.(Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

Pension officials believe the state led the city into bankruptcy before meaningful negotiations over proposed benefit concessions could take place.

Union officials believe there was never any real intention to try to avoid Chapter 9 on the part of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who is a bankruptcy lawyer.

Orr was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder in March to address the city's massive debt, which has crippled the city's ability to provide basic services, even in matters of life and death.

In a press conference held after he filed the bankruptcy petition Thursday afternoon, Orr said he bent over backwards to try and negotiate drastic concessions from banks, bond holders, labor and pension boards to dramatically cut down long-term obligations.

But representatives of the city's retirement systems said they were not given enough time or information to make meaningful "good-faith negotiations" possible.

"Any expectation that, within 30 days of having received access to the EM's data room, creditors could have fully completed their analyses as well as in-depth negotiations regarding a highly-complex restructuring of the city's finances, would be entirely unrealistic," said Robert Gordon, an attorney the city's two retirement systems.

In the bankruptcy filing, Snyder wrote that he is convinced that "Orr has exercised his best efforts to arrive at a restructuring plan with the city's creditors outside of bankruptcy, to no avail."

Grant said those negotiations never really occurred.

He said the pension systems and other creditors are still in the "due diligence" phase of considering Orr's proposals and that some financial information has not yet become available.

But Orr said he expects the talks to continue, and the retirement systems remain open to that.

"While this action is very disappointing, we remain open to engaging in good faith negotiations at the earliest opportunity," said George Orzech, chairman of the Police and Fire Retirement System in a statement. "From our perspective the door has not been closed to talks to help resolve the city's deficit issues."

The AFL-CIO was not as friendly in its statement on the bankruptcy filing.

With the uncertainty surrounding pensions and health benefits that Detroit workers expected and paid into in danger, labor leaders are angry.

And a joint statement from state and local AFL-CIO representatives made it clear.

"Every step of the way, the citizens of Detroit were told that they had to give up their right to democratic representation in order to avoid bankruptcy," said Chris Michalakis of the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO and Swift of the Michigan State AFL-CIO in a joint statement.

"Now that this filing has come anyway, it is clear that either state control has failed or that Governor Snyder and his emergency manager appointee were not honest about their intentions in the first place... Detroit cannot afford any further attacks on working families, who have already sacrificed so much without a say in the process. City workers have already made severe concession to keep the city afloat. It is time to put the needs of Detroit residents above the interests of out of town creditors."